Certified Folio for Properties in County Sligo

Acquiring a holding with upland commonage
Grazing shares over the Dartry plateau and the Ox Mountains attach to holdings below rather than existing as mapped parcels, and certified evidence establishes what runs with the land.

Mortgage security on a Sligo holding
Lenders financing purchases require certified title evidence, and where commonage or a coastal boundary appears they expect the position addressed before funds issue.

Administering a Sligo estate
Executors dealing with property anywhere in the county use the Certified Folio to prove the deceased's registered ownership to the Probate Office and to financial institutions.

Buying coastal land or a dune-backed site
Holdings meeting tidal water stop at the high water mark, and certified confirmation of the registered extent precedes any conclusion about the shore.

Acquiring land in a former estate
Parcels created when large nineteenth-century estates were broken up can still carry registered conditions and access arrangements.

Selling a holding held informally within a family
Ground has passed between generations without dealings being lodged, and certified evidence reconciles the register with what a household believes it owns.

Buying a holiday or amenity property on the coast
Second homes along the shore change hands regularly, and certified evidence is what a purchaser's solicitor works from.

Transferring turbary rights on hill ground
Entitlements to cut turf attach as burdens rather than mapped parcels, and certified confirmation shows what actually passes.

Refinancing a business in one of the towns
Commercial premises across the county are regularly offered as security, and banks want certified title rather than an information copy of the register.

County Sligo packs mountain, plateau, estuary and dune country into a small area, and its register changes character across very short distances.

The Dartry range behind Benbulben and the long ridge of the Ox Mountains dominate the county, and both carry commonage in the ordinary upland pattern — grazing shares held in common by the owners of holdings below, appearing on the folio as a right rather than as a mapped parcel. The extent of a share comes from the instrument that created it, not from the filed plan, so the certified folio and the accompanying documents answer different halves of the same question.

The coastline is long and deeply indented for the size of the county, running from Mullaghmore south through Sligo Bay to Enniscrone, with extensive dune systems along it. Registered title on the coast stops at the high water mark and the foreshore beyond is State property that no folio conveys. Aquaculture and shellfish operations in the bays hold their position by licence rather than by registered title, so a certified folio for adjoining land says nothing about them.

Dune ground raises its own difficulty, because a boundary drawn against a shifting sand system decades ago describes a line the ground itself has since moved away from.

Large nineteenth-century estates covered much of the good limestone land, and their break-up in the last century created holdings that can still carry registered conditions and access arrangements from the time of division.

Registration came late to parts of the uplands and land has often passed within families without formal dealings, so possessory title and gaps between the register and local understanding are both more common here than in the eastern counties.

What this means in practice is that the answer a Sligo folio gives depends heavily on where in the county the land sits, because upland, coastal and estate ground each put a different question to the same document.

Several Sligo questions need more than the Certified Folio. Where the registered extent is genuinely at issue, a Certified Map must be read with it. Where a covenant, wayleave or right of way requires construing rather than merely noticing, obtain the registered instrument as an Instrument Copy, since the terms live there rather than on the folio. Commonage extent, the foreshore beyond the high water mark and shifting dune boundaries all require enquiry beyond the folio. If the property proves unregistered, no folio exists and the Registry of Deeds becomes the record to search. And where general ownership information is all that is wanted, a Folio Search covers it.

Delivery time:

The Certified Folio is prepared as a certified hard copy and posted to you. Its standing rests entirely on the seal applied by the Property Registration Authority, so it is issued physically rather than as a download.

The copy certifies the register on the date it carries. Where a Certified Map, Instrument Copy or ordinary Folio Search is wanted for the same Sligo property, order them together.